“Better do a good deed near at home than go far away to burn incense.”
Chinese proverb, as quoted in The Homiletic Review, Vol. 90 (1925), p. 363
Misattributed
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Amelia Earhart19
American aviation pioneer and author 1897–1937Related quotes
“It's better to burn out than to fade away.”
Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter
Misattributed
“It's better to burn out than to fade away.”
Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist
Quoted by Cobain in his suicide note, this is from the song My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue) by Neil Young, from his album Rust Never Sleeps (1979)
Misattributed
Variant: It's better to burn out than fade away.
“It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out.”
John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter
Playboy interview (1980)
Context: It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out. I don't appreciate worship of dead Sid Vicious or of dead James Dean or of dead John Wayne. It's the same thing. Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison — it's garbage to me. I worship the people who survive. Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo.
Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet
Hope Evermore and Believe! http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/C/CloughArthurHugh/verse/poemsproseremains/hopeevermore.html, st. 2 (written 1853, published 1862).
Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007) 1st President of Russia and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR
Statement to a TImes reporter in 1990, as quoted in "The wit and wisdom of Boris" in Guardian Unlimited (23 April 2007)
1990s
“When zeal like incense burns, first the lamp of knowledge must be lighted.”
Thomas Watson (1616–1686) English nonconformist preacher and author
Heaven Taken By Storm
“It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist
Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman
"Home of the Shape," p. 7
The Shape (2000), Sequence: “Home of the Shape”